


Occasionally Unduly Formal

by sheffiesharpe



Series: At Least There's The Football [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anthea is totally a ninja, Gratuitous Harry Potter References, Greg Lestrade has two nieces and is good at football, I recognize that guy, M/M, musical accompaniment, poorly timed phone calls, what's the "fancy" house at Hogwart's?, you don't have to drink the tea but we will judge you for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-06
Updated: 2011-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft solves problems, Lestrade ruins John’s morning, Sherlock is difficult, and the nieces arrive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Occasionally Unduly Formal

Lestrade wakes, startled by the scent of coffee and the brush of sunlight. He bolts upright; Mycroft’s hand stays him.

“I have to—” If there’s sunlight, it’s at least closing on seven. He’s going to be two hours late at the best.

“Motorcade,” Mycroft says. “You won’t get within a dozen blocks of New Scotland Yard until eight-thirty-seven.” He offers the demitasse, holds a cup of tea in his other hand. He’s wearing his dressing gown, is showered and smooth-cheeked. “Which means we have some time still.”

The espresso is sublime. He hasn’t even had to stand up to get it. A triangle of Mycroft’s pale skin shows under his dressing gown, and there’s no second line of cloth at his collarbone, though the green silk cloaks his shins, his ankles. There’s a slight ruddiness to Mycroft’s complexion, too, and it might just be from the heat of the water, but Lestrade’s going to tell himself that it’s from Mycroft wanking in the shower. He thinks that he might be able to die happy.

Then he remembers the reason he stayed here last night. He downs the rest of his coffee in one too-hot gulp, groans, and flops back onto the pillow hard enough to jostle the whole bed.

Mycroft fixes him with a look, sucking a drop of tea from his right hand and glancing down at the sloshed mark soaking into his robe.

“Sorry.” Maybe he can learn to like tea by licking it from Mycroft’s skin, and maybe he’ll wake up, too, in his own bed and his flat will not be leaking and everything will be fine. Or not.

“There’s certainly no need for histrionics.”

“Could be.”

“Gregory.” Mycroft’s voice is slow and patient. But then he pauses. Composes himself. “What course of action shall we take?’

Lestrade exhales. “Well.” He’s still not interested in the hotel option. Any hotel that he’d accept for the girls would be one he couldn’t afford to put them in for a full week. “Mrs. Hudson still has that basement flat.” He could see if she’d allow him to let it for a week. It’s furnished now.

The look Mycroft gives him would be spectacular in any other context, a mélange of horror and sheer perplexity. “Oh _no_ ,” he says.

“She’s had it done up nice since the trainers incident.” John mentioned it. Said it wasn’t even damp anymore, and that Sherlock sometimes sneaked down, picked the lock, and sat with his skull when John was being too stupid to cohabitate with. _The sofa is rather agreeable_ , Sherlock reported. And there’s only one bullet hole in one wall, just in one low corner. No one would even notice.

Mycroft recovers his usual expression. “I do not doubt that she has, but have you considered the potential effects of spending that much time—with your impressionable nieces—within a staircase of Sherlock?”

“Oh god. Corrie.” She’d be utterly irrecoverable. Part of him thinks it might be the perfect revenge on Bob for years of sibling torment to send a miniature Sherlock back to him, but he also likes Marisol a great deal. And, Corrie gets in enough scrapes at school. She doesn’t need encouragement.

“Might I offer a suggestion?” Mycroft’s holding his teacup lightly in his right hand, but his left curls closer around the edge of the sheet. Which means he’s about to take a leap of some sort.

“As you like.” All at once, he’s afraid that Mycroft’s going to offer to host them here, or not afraid, but nervous. Four in the flat for a week—it would be chaos. It’ll be chaos for him, too, wherever they are, but it’s his chaos. Mycroft hasn’t got even a spare bedroom here.

“It may not be to your liking, actually.”

That doesn’t make him less nervous. It’s worse because he’s afraid he’ll accept. But Mycroft doesn’t offer to host them all here. He produces a photo album of his own. “I do not intend to presume,” he says, “but there is a house.” The album cover flips back.

Lestrade is relieved to see that there is no fifteen-foot gate, no stone lions in the front. Gate, yes (formidable enough to keep a lorry out of the drive, wide enough spaces between the bars for a child to duck through). Stone pillars, yes (but rough-hewn stone, mortared together comfortably, ringed with old ivy). The images pass, and Mycroft speaks in dimensions: larger than a breadbox, smaller than Windsor. “Modest,” he says. Five bedrooms, which might be modest by Mycroft’s estimate. Acreage well into double digits. “Necessary,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate, but there’s nothing that suggests it’s a vast estate or anything, no circling walls. “Not terribly far off,” he says. The train will have them in Victoria in forty-five minutes if they so desire.

“And this is yours?” One thing he’s not doing is putting his nieces in some sort of borrowed government safehouse.

Mycroft nods.

“Is this where you grew up?” He’d like to see that sometime. If the place survived Sherlock, anyway.

“Oh, no.” Mycroft shakes his head, negates it twice. He doesn’t say anything more about it, and Lestrade puts that away to ask about another time, some day when he won’t have to leave in the middle of the potential conversation. Mycroft does say, “I’ve had it for about six years now.”

Which would make it 2003. “This is where Sherlock was. After Rushington.”

Mycroft nods, smiles with half his mouth. “It, too, has been done up since.”

Lestrade peers at the images, the gardens front and back, the wide stretch of lawn. The girls never have space like this. They’d love it.

He takes a deep breath. “This is too much.”

Mycroft gives him that look. “It costs me nothing, and it solves a problem for you. There’s a very lovely little market two miles off, so you can cook as you like, and the train station’s just three.” He slides out of bed, starts taking out his clothes for the day. “Tomorrow morning, you and the girls may come here after the airport, and I can drive you up to the house in the evening.” He turns back to the closet, flicks through a terrifyingly large collection of ties. It apparently takes a while to get from cerulean to navy, long enough for Lestrade to slip up behind him, wrap both arms around his middle, kiss the back of his neck.

“So, when you said ‘we,’ last night, you really meant ‘you.’ You had it all figured out.”

Mycroft turns, his expression stricken. “I didn’t mean—”

Lestrade slides in front of him, cups his chin. “I’m taking the piss, bright boy.” He kisses the tip of Mycroft’s nose. “Thank you. But you did have it all sorted, the minute I said anything. Admit it.”

Mycroft waits a moment, then nods, once, just a tiny movement. They stand there a moment, and then the alarm sounds on Lestrade’s mobile.

“The hell?” He picks it up from Mycroft’s nightstand, kills the sound. It was on the other side last night, and also set about three hours earlier.

Mycroft is suddenly a few steps away, not looking at him, intent on selecting a pocket square. “I might have reset it so that you knew exactly when you needed to start getting ready in order to make it to the office prior to your supervisor, who will have some rail maintenance to deal with this morning, as well.” He holds out Lestrade’s suit, which is no longer in his duffle but hanging, neatly, on the back of the door.

He takes the hanger, and the movement has made the front of Mycroft’s dressing gown gape a bit, baring a thin stripe of pale skin, halfway down his chest. “Sorry,” Lestrade says, “can’t help myself,” and he leans in, presses a firm, wet kiss to the hard, slight hollow of his breastbone. It’s so difficult not to rub his whole cheek there, not to tug open the soft belt altogether. He presses another kiss to Mycroft’s shocked mouth. Now they’ve both taken liberties. He retreats to the shower.

***

As Mycroft predicted, he is the first of his team to make it in for the day, and he is twenty minutes deep into his stack of paperwork when Sergeant Donovan skims in the door.

“Brace yourself,” she says, quietly, and four steps behind her is Superintendant Forsythe. He drops a folder on Lestrade’s desk, and three other things fall to the floor.

“Get your pet consultant and get on this. Yesterday.”

Lestrade looks at the report. The incident—a jewel theft, and when he sees the address behind it, he knows exactly why immediately is required—happened at three o’clock this morning, apparently, so yesterday’s not really an option. “This isn’t really my area.” White collar crime is in no way his specialization. That whole field’s become all about technical prowess, gadgets and slick talkers. “And I’m going to be gone—” He wants to leave things in order, proper order, as best he can.

Forsythe plants one gaunt finger in the middle of the folder. “Your paperwork is the least of anyone’s worries. Just get Holmes and shift it. I’d like to not have to play footsie with the F.B.I. to borrow their specialist.” He pushes the folder closer. “Out.” He stalks back through the door.

He starts dialing Sherlock, looks at Sally. “I have _today_ to get this sorted. I will not lose even two minutes to you and Sherlock sniping at each other.” Sherlock will be getting the same speech.

Sergeant Donovan gives him a tight-lipped smile. “No, you won’t. Because I’m stuck doing your paperwork.” She takes his chair out from under him. As he’s waiting for Sherlock to pick up, she says, “Don’t see why we can’t wait for Caffrey, anyway.”

“Because then everyone will fight over who gets to play footsie with him.” The man’s too pretty by half. And Sherlock would probably feel put out to know that Neal Caffrey is the one person who makes Anderson even more mental than he does. Not that they’ve ever actually spoken. Caffrey has only walked across this floor once, turned every head in the building. That was enough. And Caffrey’s _nice_. Legendarily charming. No one has ever said that of Sherlock.

But now is not the time to think on that. He hangs up because Sherlock’s not answering, calls John.

John gets it on the second ring, his voice smudgy like he’s been asleep. Lestrade refuses to feel bad about it.

“Sherlock. Now.”

“Fuck,” John says into the receiver, and there’s Sherlock. He sounds like he’s out of breath.

“The necklace?” Sherlock says. Lestrade doesn’t want to know how he knows already. There’s a flutter of cloth and a steady stream of swearing from John. Lestrade is actually impressed with a few of them. Sherlock makes a gasped noise of some sort, then, “I can be to Kensington in fifteen minutes.”

“Thirty or I will murder you,” John says in the background.

“Twenty-three,” Sherlock says. And he hangs up.

Lestrade just puts his coat back on. Sally glances up at him.

“If he shows his face while you’re away, I won’t be responsible.” She types faster than he does.

He checks his pockets. “Neither will I. Won’t be here.” He grins, and he’s off.

***

It’s twenty-six minutes until Sherlock’s there, John with him, and John gives him a black glare.

Lestrade just shakes his head. “Sorry for you,” he says, “but I’ve owed this one a few of those.” Particularly in the days when Sherlock had been in the habit of showing up at his flat. In his front room. Twice in his bedroom. He jerks his thumb at Sherlock, but Sherlock is already peering into the case that has been relieved of an eighteenth century sapphire pendant, somehow, without anyone seeing it go.

The curator of the exhibit is utterly beside herself. “I love that necklace,” she says, no fewer than four times, and her brown eyes are watery. She starts giving the history of the piece, beginning with a touching eulogy to Queen Anne, who is, she says, her favourite. Sherlock rolls his eyes.

After another minute, Sherlock holds up his hand. “Irrelevant until it is relevant, Ms—”

“Cuthbert. Pauline Cuthbert.”

“Née?”

She shakes her head. “I’m not married.” She sighs. “I would like to be.” Her gaze flickers toward a framed photograph on her desk, her face rueful and awkward. “You know how weddings are. Expensive.” The man in the photograph is slightly buck-toothed but grinning, a collection of small screwdrivers tucked into the pocket of his Oxford shirt. Computer fellow, then.

Sherlock makes a noncommittal sound and simply walks away. The curator slumps back into her desk chair. They follow Sherlock.

The worst part of this is that both he and John are singularly useless in a situation like this. Which leaves them to mill about without moving because the whole thing, until Sherlock finds something, is still a crime scene, and he’s already lit into John for taking two steps to the left. So there they stand, mostly quiet; Lestrade attempted to offer some thoughts on the Premiership’s potential late-season transfers, and Sherlock asked if Djibril Cisse was going to pull a royal heirloom from his jockstrap and if he wasn’t, would they please shut the fuck up.

They stand longer. Lestrade tries not to think about Betsy and Corrie being in London in fewer than twenty-four hours, not quite a day. Tries not to think about waking up to Mycroft with coffee. God, that was a treasure. Mycroft without a shirt under his robe and bearing espresso. Maybe he sighs.

Sherlock whirls, his magnifying glass snapping closed in his palm. “If you do not stop— _thinking_ —about my brother, I shall leave. I shall leave this very instant.”

Lestrade’s first instinct is to say he wasn’t. But he was. And how. And then he wants to laugh because the sheer outrage on Sherlock’s face—but when Sherlock threatens to leave, he means it. Usually, he doesn’t even bother threatening, and there’ve been two situations in which Sherlock’s fit of pique has trumped his curiosity. And if Sherlock leaves, there’s a significant chance that Forsythe keeps him on this case anyway. Mycroft could likely get him out of that, of course, but that’s not a solution he wants to be in a habit of using.

There’s this, though, too: “I can’t,” Lestrade says. “God help me, I’ve tried.” Not very hard, admittedly, particularly not recently, but sometimes Mycroft makes it very difficult to concentrate, which is occasionally inconvenient (losing the thread of a conversation) and occasionally dangerous (crossing streets, chopping carrots).

Whatever answer it is that Sherlock expects, this clearly isn’t it. Everything about him seems to still, save his left hand, which opens and closes the magnifying glass once in his palm. He draws himself straighter, is impossibly taller, and he looks at Lestrade with his strange, pale eyes. Looks into. Maybe through. Lestrade has felt this before, but maybe not in the same way: Sherlock Holmes is a dangerous man. Sherlock turns back to his work without another word, crouching to peer under the case.

John, beside him, glances over, but he barely turns his head to do it. Lestrade exhales at least half a minute after he intended to. He isn’t certain what has just transpired, and John’s face offers no answers save the implicit feeling that he’s got no idea, either.

And there they are again. Waiting.

“John.” Sherlock doesn’t look back. “A few sheets from a lint roller. The curator will have one in her desk drawer. Black clothing and orange tabbies.”

John gives him a sympathetic look and leaves the room, treading carefully.

“No one else can have something that Mycroft doesn’t,” Sherlock says. He touches his tongue to something that could be sand. Lestrade hopes it’s sand. “First it was toys and candy, then books. Now it’s governments.” He peers through his hand-glass again. “I daresay trifling matters like your whole family wouldn’t pose much of an obstacle to him.”

When he subtracts Sherlock’s _sturm und drang_ from that, the idea is attractive, maybe. Mycroft’s interest in his family is welcome. Bob and Mari haven’t reported helicopters circling their apartment, and he doesn’t think there are cameras in his flat. If there are, someone’s gotten an eyeful, more than once. The thought nearly makes him grin. He says, “I’ll take my chances.”

At that, Sherlock actually turns, fixes him with another long, strange look. Lestrade can feel himself bracing, the tension coming into his shoulders. But Sherlock says nothing else, and when John returns with the whole lint roller, Sherlock peels off half a dozen sheets, fits them to his palm, and pats the floor beneath and beside the case. He examines the two of them more closely, puts one off to the side.

“Security footage, Inspector.”

“We’ve already looked at it.” And so has Sherlock. Every blessed camera in the place, and there are a powerful lot of them.

“Not from here. The park. There will be a bench with a sandy patch in front of it. Regular sand. Extraordinarily regular sand.” Sherlock inches back from the case, crouches down, his arse in the air, his face all but pressed to one of the ornate clawed feet on the case. John shifts a bit. After a moment, he says, “John, you go with him.”

And they are dismissed.

They’re already outside, have been let out the very ornate front gate, which leaves a several dozen tourists very unhappy because the museum is closed and now clearly Not Royals are being let _out_ the gates that they are not being let _in_ , when it hits him. Sherlock just asked him to do something. Quite literally, to go find something that must be an important piece of whatever the puzzle is. In eight years, Sherlock has never done that.

Something has gone either very right or very wrong, and he does not know which it is.

When he sees it, though, he knows they’ve found the bench that Sherlock’s looking for. It’s in the southwest corner of Hyde Park, near Kensington Road, not far off from the Round Pond. He’s walked by it a hundred times, and he’s never noticed the sand around it, like someone desperately wanted a bench there but there was some sort of dip, some manner of hollow in the ground that needed to be filled in before it could be set up. John puts a good pinch of the sand inside a receipt, twists it like a Christmas cracker, and tucks it into his pocket. Then he takes a photo of the bench, texts it to Sherlock.

A response is nigh-immediate: _Now the camera._

Behind the bench is the long iron fence that cuts this part of the park off from traffic. It’s wound through with ivy, too, but the new growth hasn’t come in, and he can see buildings behind it, the street. Traffic cameras. He tugs John past, and they have to exit the park, come around on the other side, where the sidewalk is narrow and lined with construction tape.

And there, mounted on the side of a tower of expensive flats, is the camera. In two phone calls, there’s a promise that the digital footage is being sent to his work e-mail account, before he even has to impress upon the person on the other end that it’s rather urgent. He stares at his mobile. “No one in traffic has ever gotten on things so quickly for us before.” Of course, he’s not usually working on glamorous crimes involving the possessions of dead princesses, either.

Or, as John says, “It’s good to be sleeping with a Holmes. When the police don’t call right in the middle of it.” Again, a pointed glare. John turns around, walks backward a bit, watching the bench come in and out of his line of sight. “And when they’re not driving you absolutely bloody mental.”

Lestrade laughs. He and Mycroft haven’t been together enough to hit that point. Lestrade finds himself strangely jealous of John for that reason, actually. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t mean to say anything. But what falls out of his face is, “I’m not actually sleeping with him. I mean, I have _slept_ with him, but not—” He bites down hard on his lip. That was not meant to be out loud.

“Really?” John looks genuinely surprised. “It’s been…well. Since a little after the pool.” He shakes his head like he can’t believe it, and Lestrade wonders what that might mean about Sherlock, but surely John knows that Sherlock and Mycroft occasionally engineer their oppositeness.

Lestrade shrugs. He wants to talk about Mycroft, but he doesn’t really want to talk about this. Not with a third party. That’s between the two of them, and it’s not even in the open between them. It’s frustrating, but exciting, in its way, and he’s not certain what bringing it up would do, anyway.

“I could forget I ever heard that,” John offers.

“Yes, thanks.” They go on, quietly. He asks John if Sherlock’s truly getting something from sand and isn’t that really tenuous—shoe treads carry a lot of things a rather long way sometimes—and John agrees that it seems like a leap and they both know that Sherlock will be right.

They’re passing the Round Pond, ready to turn back into the palace gardens, when Lestrade decides: fuck it. He’s going to say it.

“I think it’s worth it. I hope. I mean—he’s meeting my nieces.” He swallows. “Tomorrow.”

John has heard about the girls, little bits, here and there. It’s hard to talk about them standing beside a corpse, which is often when he sees John, but John knows they exist. Sherlock also knows they exist, and Sherlock has needled him about them exactly once. It might be the one lesson that’s ever stuck with the man.

John whistles. “That’s big.”

“Didn’t plan it this way.” So soon. But if he thinks about it, there wasn’t a point anywhere in the time that counts as “relationship” that he wouldn’t have wanted Mycroft to meet them. And he’s dated some people he wouldn’t have wanted the girls to meet, full stop.

In two more steps, John puts that all together. “I thought they were on the other side of the Atlantic.” They tiptoe back into the room, and Sherlock’s peering again at the sand.

Lestrade checks his watch. “They will be. Until tomorrow morning. So if we could get this pesky theft issue sorted by tea, that’d be grand.”

Sherlock says, “If I could see that film, I doubt it will take that long.” He holds out his hand, and John puts the twist of sand in it.

Pauline is upset, too, that the thief tracked in sand. “I wipe down this floor twice a day,” she says. It isn’t right to let the grit, the dirt lie about amid so many nice things. She has tried to get David—the boyfriend, it seems—to understand that. Lestrade likes her, how she’s trying to keep good humour when she’s clearly upset.

Lestrade begs use of her computer, and everything looks like it has to be too grainy to be useful, and a person—two of them, actually—have their backs to the camera, only dark silhouettes in the streetlight glow, broken by the fence’s bars. But Sherlock’s not looking for faces. He’s watching their hands, their arms: every touch, every movement. Hands together, apart, one hand against another’s cheek. Then one body walking away, back toward the street, the other toward the palace.

“Crime of sentiment,” Sherlock says. “Trite.” Behind him, there’s a choked sound.

When they turn to look at the curator, the woman’s face is in her hands, her shoulders shaking. “This is all my fault,” she says. “I was certain he was joking. He was back to the flat in less than an hour.”

Sherlock makes a bored huff, and John gives him the _not good_ face. Lestrade is impressed at how often it seems to work these days. Sherlock turns and inspects his new sand, which apparently confirms that one of those sets of shoes—and not Pauline’s because the obviously female person in the film was wearing wellingtons that are not here today—was standing here sometime between last night’s mop-up and this morning.

But now Pauline Cuthbert is outright sobbing, and that’s as close to a confirmation of guilt as he can imagine. That was what he was really hoping wasn’t the case. “S’all right, love,” he says. “Any idea where he might be now?” If they can get to him before he tries to sell it—if he _is_ trying to sell it, anyway—that will help his defense. Because one look at the very likely thief, at David Brown, will confirm that this is no criminal mastermind. He’s clever, of course, clever enough to have gotten himself inside by circumnavigating the security feeds, but Sherlock dismisses it all in light of his apparent reasons.

 _Melodrama_ , he mutters. Melodrama and conversely _dullness_ because Pauline’s able to reach the man by phone and he turns himself in without even the slightest bit of fight and it’s one of those very rare times when Lestrade actually feels sorry for the poor bastard he’s bringing in.

For reasons he doesn’t understand, Sherlock and John are still with him when he’s about to take the last of his paperwork to a very late lunch. And Sherlock and John slide into the chairs opposite him at the delicatessen, too. Sherlock’s got that impenetrable mask on; John looks thrilled to be somewhere with actual food.

Sherlock won’t actually order—he says sandwiches are boring—but John does it for him, up at the counter. The sandwich that Sherlock is presented with, though, must be deemed acceptable, because he eats nearly all of it. He eats so quickly, too; he sits back in his chair, watches Lestrade. Sherlock’s impassive stare pretty well kills his appetite, but he’s not going to stop his lunch to suit him. It becomes a waiting game, and this time, Sherlock cracks first.

“You will not be talked out of this madness?”

“No.” He eats the last of his pickle spear, and he’s pretty certain it’s as good as the ones at the delicatessen that was down the block from Bob and Marisol’s second flat in New York. Somewhere in Brooklyn.

“He’s worse than I am.” In what aspect, Sherlock doesn’t elaborate.

“That’s what he says about you.” Which isn’t true, but Sherlock directly bitching about Mycroft would feel easier than…whatever this is.

“No, he doesn’t.” Sherlock says it with utmost certainty.

John looks nearly amused now, and Lestrade will get him back for this, somehow. “Look, what do you want from me? I like him. We’re getting on so far. The world continues to turn.” Maybe there are greater implications. Lestrade isn’t going to think about them now.

“He’s not at all your type.” Sherlock sits back, his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re incompatible,” he says, like they’ve circled choices in a magazine quiz, tallied up the score. “Certain disaster.”

John snickers, covers his mouth with a curled hand.

“Yeah, he sounds like a ruddy gossip rag, doesn’t he?” Lestrade opens the folder he brought with him, but he’s not reading anything in it, is only hoping that Sherlock will at least rebut that. Tabloids disgust Sherlock in a way that few other things do.

But Sherlock doesn’t take the bait. He steeples his fingers, peers over them, and Lestrade doesn’t consider himself easily discomfited, but this territory is new. This territory is new and he has a great deal to finish before he leaves for the day, and he has a very early wake-up call, and he can’t decide what Sherlock’s driving at. That’s the worst part of it. If Sherlock’s just being a prat about Mycroft, he can deal with that. But he hasn’t thrown a direct insult in the last forty minutes, and it’s becoming unnerving.

So he stands. “Right. You lot have a lovely afternoon, and maybe I’ll have something interesting for you the week after next.” He’s still sort of hoping he can find some kind of lead on the cold cases he’s sifted out to take with him.

And that, at least, gets Sherlock’s attention to fracture. “What do you mean, ‘week after next’?”

Lestrade shrugs into his coat. “I’m not in next week. And I don’t recommend asking Sergeant Donovan for any favors.” She was marginally sympathetic after the swimming pool, but Sherlock wore out that tolerance in exactly a case and a half after.

Sherlock wrinkles his nose at the thought. “Rubbish. You’re always in.”

“Nope.” Outside, there’s a thin grey drizzle, and he turns up his collar in advance. “Good luck entertaining him, John.” John appears to have accepted his fate. Today, Lestrade doesn’t feel sorry for him. He walks for the door.

“Lestrade.” Sherlock gives one final protestation. He might say something else, too, as Lestrade pushes through the door, but a bus passes, the engine choke and water slosh drowning the words.

***

All night, he barely sleeps. The girls’ flight is scheduled to come in at just before seven, and he’s planning to leave not far after five. No matter how much he protests, Mycroft gets up with him, has a cup of tea while Lestrade goes through two espressos.

Mycroft props his feet on Lestrade’s knees and yawns, though the action seems more a biological imperative than anything else because his eyes are open and clear and he’s far more awake than anyone should be at half-four.

“You should have stayed in bed,” Lestrade says, his hands flat over the pale, bony tops of Mycroft’s feet. Mycroft’s feet seem to always be cold.

Mycroft shakes his head. “I’ll be off not long after you. Brunch with Kiev.” There’s no way to tell if he’s actually serious, and Lestrade isn’t certain he really wants to know. Then Mycroft pulls his feet back, crosses his legs primly at the knee, rests his teacup in his palm. “And did it occur to you that I might be anxious, too?”

Lestrade stops mid-sip. “You?” He puts his cup down. “Why?” It can’t be about work. Nothing about his work seems to distress him, which is its own brand of deeply distressing.

Mycroft puts his cup back on the table, balls up his hands in his lap. “What if they mislike me?”

“What, Bits and Corrie?” He snorts. Mycroft still looks serious, so he makes himself be serious for a moment. “They’ll like you because I like you.” Bob says that’s the only reason they like classic punk—all Bob gets is, “You don’t listen to it _right_ , Da.” Lestrade maintains that his musical taste is simply more discerning.

Mycroft sniffs. “I should rather be liked on my own merits.”

Lestrade stands, puts himself behind Mycroft’s chair, puts his hands on Mycroft’s shoulders. He squeezes, softly. “It’ll happen. You’re imminently likeable. Unless you’re insulting my taste.” He leans over to peer at him.

Mycroft glances up. “Arsenal?” There’s a faint smile behind the seriousness.

“That is not a road you want to go down, Holmes.” He nips, then kisses the top of one ear. “Just relax. Don’t try too hard.” He’s not going to tell Mycroft the utter hell that “trying too hard” gets one. It’s what they’ve said about the last two babysitters (trying too hard to be “cool”), what Corrie says about her English teacher (trying too hard to make her care about books for _kids_ ), what Betsy said, just last week, about some boy in her class (trying too hard to get her to notice him—and maybe Lestrade just really doesn’t want to think about that business just yet).

Mycroft takes a deep breath.

“They’re just kids, Mycroft. You used to be one.” He curls both arms down over Mycroft’s chest, hugs him half-upside down and backwards. “Probably.” He winks, kisses his cheek. “I’ve got to go.” There is the very, very slight possibility that a tailwind will have them landing a few minutes early.

Mycroft presses one hand to where Lestrade’s forearms cross his body. “Until later.”

***

He tries to remind himself, standing with fifty other people at the double doors from International Arrivals, that the girls will be at the tail-end of the people from their flight. They’ll have to wait for one of the crew members to escort them off the plane, then for a gate agent to walk them through to this point. He feels a little sympathy for the customs officer who’s dealing with Corrie. If the officer asks what her plans are for her time in the U.K., she’s _tell_ them.

There’s a knot of tall, frankly exceptional-looking men in suits, Senegalese by the green, yellow, and red football badges on their luggage, and one of them reaches to hold the door for another group of people. A small pale blur ducks under and between, dashing out between the aluminum railings, a small suitcase bumping along behind.

Corrie stands up straight, looks back and forth. He puts his thumb and forefinger in his mouth, whistles sharply. She whirls, twists back between the men without clipping any of them, and climbs right through the railing. Not ten seconds behind, Betsy cuts the corner close, dragging another bag with her, and climbs over the rail. They both crash into his sides, arms knotted around his waist. He puts an arm around each of them, gives up on hoping Corrie will do anything but try to break his ribs like this, and they stand there for a moment. Then the gate agent finds them. He’s toting another suitcase, holding a piece of paper.

“These are yours?” He’s young, can’t be more than twenty-five, has a shock of yellow hair. He looks like he woke up ten minutes ago.

Lestrade nods. He worms a hand into his back pocket, passes the man his passport so he can check off, on the sheet he’s got, that he’s handed the girls off to the correct person. In a twinkling, the agent’s off again.

He hugs them again, each separately this time, and slips the strap from the larger suitcase over his shoulder, clips Betsy’s bag to it. Corrie insists on carrying her own things, and Betsy has a backpack that appears to be part of her person now, but Corrie holds his hand tight and Betsy loops her arm through his as they walk.

“Good flight?”

Corrie nods and Betsy says it was fine. “Just…loud.” She leans forward, gives Corrie a meaningful eye.

He raises an eyebrow at Corrie.

She shrugs. “No one _else_ could hear me.”

Which means that neither of them have slept at all, but a nap later wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen, especially since he didn’t particularly sleep well, either. Still, they don’t look tired—to be that young again—but when the train’s as far as Hammersmith, they both slow down a little bit, actually start trading space to talk instead of requiring enforced sorting of conversations.

Corrie yawns and puts her cheek against his shoulder. She’s gotten her hair cut since Christmas, chopped off her ponytail. He’s surprised he didn’t hear about it. He brushes her tufty hair behind her ear. “When did you do this?”

Corrie grins. “Yesterday afternoon.”

Betsy reaches behind her head, gathers her long dark hair tight, and mimes running a pair of scissors across the back of her head. “Mum almost had kittens.”

Corrie shrugs. “It’s not really how I want it—here.” She tugs at the impromptu fringe. “It’s still in my face.”

And he knows, from the look in her eye, that it’ll be in her face exactly until she finds a pair of scissors. And then Bob and Marisol will never let them visit again because Corrie will come home bald. He decides to pre-empt.

“Promise me you won’t fix the rest of it yourself,” he says, “and I’ll take you somewhere cool to get a haircut.” Where that is yet, he has no idea.

“Can I get it cut where you get yours cut?” She reaches up and pets at the soft spikes.

He thinks Phil would probably have kittens if he plunked a nine-year-old girl into the barber’s chair. “Nah,” he says. “He only cuts grey hair.”

Corrie pulls a face.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “It’ll be good.” And then Betsy pulls his sleeve, her eyes bright with _me, too_. Bob and Mari are going to murder him this summer.

When they pass through Piccadilly, don’t transfer until Leicester Square, Betsy cocks her head. “Did you move?”

Of course they’ve memorized the Tube map. He says, “A pipe burst in my building, and it’s not really livable just now.” He clears his throat. “We’re going to Mycroft’s.”

Betsy says, “We get to meet him now?” Her fingers drum on his forearm.

Corrie wants to know if they can still see his flat, too.

“Later today,” he says, for meeting Mycroft, and promises that they’ll see the flat. This afternoon, likely, because he’s got to pick up a few things if they’re going to be away. “And then we have a little more travel ahead. Think you’ll survive?”

They both give him the _Muggle, please_ expression that is a direct copy of Marisol’s. So he just asks if they’re hungry because he knows the answer to that question is always.

He’s had the _pain perdu_ custard in the fridge since this morning. His excuse is that it’s really more of a midnight snack for the girls than any of the proper meals. They’ll eat like proper human beings at lunch.

It’s not even nine when they get back to Mycroft’s flat, and he’s actually hoping that Anthea will be there, but she isn’t. It’s one of the drivers who opens the door. Lestrade thinks his name is Jerome. Whatever it is, the man doesn’t say much, and Lestrade is never sure if it’s because Jerome is remarkably discreet, because he’s only interested in doing his particular job (and his job is not small talk), or because, by ignoring Lestrade, he can also ignore that his boss is, at least by appearance, a little gay. Lestrade isn’t about to try to categorize Mycroft in the GLBTA spectrum—two instances of particular attraction isn’t much of a sample size. There is something remarkably flattering about being half of that pool, though.

Jerome holds the door while they file in. Corrie stops, peers up at him. “Aren’t you even going to kiss him hello?” Her eyebrows furrow.

“Corrie!” Betsy’s cheeks flame red by association.

His goddamn brother and sister-in-law who cannot keep their hands and faces to themselves are to blame for this. Lestrade opens his mouth to apologize, but Jerome squats, folds the six-and-a-half feet of himself down until he’s mostly Corrie’s size. His grin is bright across his dark skin. “I might, but I suspect that Mr. Holmes would take exception if I did.”

“Oh,” she says. Lestrade watches it sink in: this is not Mycroft. Corrie switches her suitcase handle to her left, holds out her right hand. “Coralina Helene Aguilar y Cruz-Lestrade.”

Jerome takes it, shakes solemnly. “Jerome Carter Ferdinand, Junior.” He looks at Betsy.

She dips a little curtsy. “Elizabeth Dorotea Aguilar y Cruz-Lestrade.”

Then both of the girls turn to look at him expectantly. There’s nothing for it except to participate. “Gregory Émile Lestrade. And sorry my niece assumed you were my boyfriend.” He offers his hand. Corrie just shrugs, says something about Jerome being tall and her _tío_ likes tall and he said Mycroft was tall and now totally qualifies as “later”—and then Betsy clamps a hand over Corrie’s mouth.

Jerome stands and takes his hand in a grip that is firm enough, but not an attempt to crush knuckles, which Lestrade appreciates. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Jerome says, quietly, too, “You need anything, the line in the front room comes directly to us. Didn’t want to say anything before. Some blokes are on the down low, don’t want commentary.” Then Jerome carries Corrie’s suitcase up to Mycroft’s landing before he goes back to the first floor flat, which seems to be more of a base camp than a living space.

He uses the key Mycroft lent him, and the girls step across the threshold carefully. They both see the bookshelves first.

He gives them the short version of the tour; Mycroft will be better at answering the questions than he would be, and he tells them that. Betsy’s already spooling up questions about the paintings and the fact that he has a whole set of books bound in a rich, purple leather. She stares at them, the embossed covers that are marked only with a Roman numeral, the same oakleaf beneath. They aren’t old, and they’re books—it’s not like she’d damage them, but she says she’ll ask before she looks at them.

“They’re the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen.” She touches the spine of the fourth volume, but that’s all. Betsy is the one who can wait for Christmas, the one who doesn’t start ransacking closets in November.

Corrie is picking through the discs on top of the stereo. They are the only thing in the entire flat that appears to ever be out of order. There, though everything is in its case, they’re completely haphazard. Lestrade wonders if there’s a system there that he simply can’t figure out.

“You made this one,” she says, and holds up the first mix-CD he’d made for Mycroft.

“Affirmative.” He starts soaking bread in custard, heats the oven and a skillet.

She puts it in, hits the randomize button on the stereo. Corrie is still a little young to care about the arc of an album. And there’s also nothing wrong with leaping in on “Pinball Wizard.” He texts Mycroft to say that they’ve made it back to the flat, that they’re fine. He’ll save the Jerome story for in-person.

Corrie is quiet for a little while, opening Mycroft’s CDs and reading through the liner notes for a few operas. Betsy’s curled up on the chaise with a very nice but ordinary-leather-bound copy of _Don Quixote_. It is, of course, in the original Spanish. She’s been trying to get through it for two years now. “It won’t stick,” she says, but she keeps trying. Explaining that she’s at least thirty years shy of the target demographic means nothing to her. He’d be willing to bet that it might stick this time.

“Oi,” Corrie says. “This one’s for us.” She’s holding open a bifold cardboard sleeve, and there’s a blue sticky note inside it. When he looks, it says, _Por las Lestradas_. The handwriting isn’t Mycroft’s—is smaller, more pointed, and not in that green ink that Mycroft appears to use for everything. The disc is just an EP, four tracks, by a French-Chilean artist named Ana Tijoux. He’s never heard of her.

Tucked inside the sleeve is another bit of paper, hand-transcribed lyrics. His Spanish isn’t perfect, but he can see that there isn’t anything he’d be worried about them hearing. Corrie’s already got the first CD out, the tray open, her hand held out expectantly. He hands the disc over. He can’t even tell from the packaging what kind of music it’s going to be.

It spins up to be somewhere close to rap, which puts him on edge on principle, but the woman’s voice is really lovely, low and edgy in places, smooth and melodic elsewhere, and he knows he’s missing some of the details, but she’s singing about the challenges of writing, about the political unrest in Pinochet’s Chile, about football. It’s intelligent. And the girls are utterly rapt. So he says nothing, and by the second play-through, while he’s sliding the slices of thick, golden bread onto plates, spreading marmalade, he even gets a little caught up in one of the choruses.

The later morning passes in a slightly jammy haze, but the girls aren’t giving in to so much as a nap until they see his flat, and they’re all but hauling him through the Maida Vale station. Betsy gets them all the way to the front door without his help.

When he looks at her, she shrugs and says, “Google maps.”

Inside, everything is still covered in plastic, all of that coated in a dense film of plaster dust, and he knows that there’s going to be a lot more dust under the plastic, too. But Betsy and Corrie have a good time peering up into the gaping hole in the ceiling, looking at the shiny new piping, listening to what sounds like far more chaos in the flat upstairs, and he gets his big duffel, packs clothing for the week, his football and trainers, a sleeve full of CDs just in case there’s a stereo, his book. He opens the drawer to his nightstand for the glasses he’s supposed to wear for reading and never does, and he looks longingly at the strip of condoms, the bottle of lubricant. But he likely won’t see Mycroft much this week anyway, and even if he was going to, sex is not happening while the girls are visiting, even assuming they got anywhere near that anytime soon. He tosses his glasses case in the duffel, closes the drawer as Betsy comes into the room.

She looks into his open wardrobe. “Tío! You have to take the shirt!”

‘The shirt’ is an aubergine button-down that Marisol got him for the holidays two years ago. He’s worn it exactly once, and it is, without a doubt, the gayest article of clothing he owns. But Marisol swore it was his color, whatever that means. It’s not Arsenal red, so he’s not particularly interested in believing her. And it looks like something Sherlock would wear, so that really means it’s not his speed.

“It’s a little much for this week.” It’s a flimsy excuse, but he’s going to try.

Betsy reaches in, takes the hanger down, holds it up to his chest. She just looks at him, and he folds it into the bag. There are worse things than the girls seeing him wear a Christmas present from their mother. Maybe he can cook in it, ruin it with a spectacular grease-spatter, and never have to wear it again.

Out in the front room, Corrie’s burrowed into the media cabinet, has come up with all of his _A Bit of Fry & Laurie_.

“Nice try.” Most of it’s more than a bit too racy for a nine-year-old, but he lets her pile in the _Jeeves & Wooster_ series. By the time they’re ready to go, he’s got a whole bag of just amusements—the DVDs, more music, the football, a few decks of cards.

When they get back, Jerome isn’t there anymore. Betsy looks terribly disappointed, and Corrie pronounces the other driver, who only buzzes them in, as much less awesome. Lestrade just hopes that that means Mycroft might be home soonish. He needs his help with Corrie’s hair issue, which needs to be resolved because she keeps glaring at the strands around her face and looking murderous. He’d trim it himself, but he promised “cool.” They pile on Mycroft’s sofa to wait, and the girls aren’t really even paying attention to his channel-flipping.

“When is Mycroft done with work?” Corrie yawns and tugs the pillow from the corner of the sofa and settles it against his elbow before she flops onto it. Betsy’s already dozing against the other arm of the couch, her feet braced on his knee.

“Not sure. Hopefully soon.” He nudges down the volume, the programme something about red pandas. Within minutes, they’re all asleep.

***

Lestrade hears the door open, and he realizes that the front room is a bit less tidy now than they’d found it. He’d get up, too, but Corrie has half-melted on him, and Betsy has her bare feet tucked behind his back, and he’s dead comfortable except for his neck, which is going to hurt a lot as soon as he moves. So he waits, and Mycroft appears in the doorway. He’s wearing the hat.

Lestrade lifts his head anyway, ignores the spiky stiffness to look him up and down, to lick his lower lip, let it slide slowly between his teeth. Mycroft’s cheeks turn a remarkably satisfying shade of red. As carefully as he can, he inches off the couch, letting Corrie’s pillow down gently. She just follows the movement, curls into her half of the sofa.

Mycroft opens a padded chest beside the window, takes out two plush throws, and Lestrade drapes them over the girls as gently as he can. Then he pads out of the room, pulls Mycroft down the hall.

“Sorry we wrecked the place.” He rolls his head from side to side, tries to loosen the cramped muscles.

“Three dirty forks and a book are hardly a mess.”

When Mycroft does embellish, he understates.

“But the girls—they’re well? No troubles?” He glances toward the den, which is quiet, still, save the low murmur of the programme host, who’s now on to coral reefs.

“Right as rain. Though Corrie mistook Jerome for you, told him to snog me hello proper-like, though he declined.” He gives Mycroft an expectant look, reaches, tugs once at Mycroft’s tie. “ _Someone_ ought to do it.”

Mycroft’s eyes widen briefly, then he tilts his head and does exactly that, pressing them together until Lestrade’s back is against the hallway wall. Mycroft kisses him until they’re both breathless, and maybe there’s a hint of desperation in it—it’s very possible that this is going to be it for the remainder of the week—but there’s also Mycroft’s thumb along his cheekbone, his other hand splayed at the base of his spine. Mycroft nips once at his lip, and he clutches him closer.

When Mycroft puts a few inches between them, he nods. “Yes,” he says, looking at Lestrade’s mouth. “Someone really ought to do that every day.” And he kisses Lestrade again.

They should stop. They should compose themselves. Really should. They both come to that conclusion independently; Lestrade can feel it, the change in Mycroft’s posture, the slow drift of his hand from Lestrade’s back to his side.

Lestrade steals one more little kiss. “That will do nicely.” Then he takes a deep breath, draws back more, and he closes his eyes, wills himself toward a state of not wanting to damage Mycroft’s clothing. He cracks one eye open, and there’s Mycroft still, watching him.

Lestrade inches away from the wall, turns the corner to the front room. “Fuck,” he says. “I can’t look at you.” Without turning back, he stretches one hand out, but Mycroft doesn’t take it. When he glances over his shoulder, Mycroft’s staring at the floor, shoulders slumped.

“You daft git.” He backtracks two steps, takes Mycroft’s hand, pulls him a little further from where the girls are napping. He shoves right up in Mycroft’s space, presses close, so Mycroft can’t miss the fact that he’s hard, that it’s because of him. “Looking at you makes it very difficult to get rid of this.” And being snugged up against him doesn’t help, either. Still, he bites gently at the edge of Mycroft’s jaw. “You are very intelligent, but not very smart sometimes.”

Mycroft tilts his whole body into the contact. “It is simply inconceivable that someone should say such things and be serious.” His voice is low, and he’s still sort of looking away, but he puts both arms around Lestrade, keeps him there. And they hold a moment, like that.

“I am perfectly serious.” Lestrade speaks against the side of Mycroft’s throat, lets the words form against his skin. Mycroft’s left hand pets the nape of his neck. “This is also not helping.” He makes himself push back, and Mycroft is looking, not-very-covertly, at his groin.

Lestrade is proud of him. But. “I am making coffee. And you are not coming into the kitchen.” He draws an imaginary line across the wooden floor with his socked foot.

“Yes,” Mycroft says. “Excuse me.” He turns the corner, and the door to the lav closes.

While his coffee cools, Lestrade holds his wrists under the cold tap and thinks about doing paperwork while holding hands with Superintendant Forsythe. That works fairly well.

He tidies up, too, and checks the time. It’s still in afternoon territory, which is nigh unheard-of for Mycroft to be finished with his day. Not that he’s complaining. He’ll give Betsy and Corrie a little longer to sleep. When Mycroft comes back, he looks perfectly composed, and he asks permission to cross the threshold to the kitchen, like it isn’t his flat. Lestrade grants it, but he keeps the small breakfast table between them. Just in case. When Mycroft sits across from him, there’s no way the nudge at his knee is accidental. Mycroft endeavors to look innocent over his teacup.

“That,” Lestrade says, “it an expression neither of you is capable of.”

Mycroft concedes that much with a shrug.

“Right.” Lestrade drums his fingers on the table. “I need a salon. A cool one.”

“I can recommend an excellent manicurist, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

Lestrade resists the urge to inspect his fingernails. “No,” he says. “Not for me. Corrie had a bit of a mishap with her hair, and Bits wants in on it too because that’s how it works.” That is how it always works.

“Oh.” Mycroft is quiet a moment, then his mobile’s in his hand. Lestrade didn’t even see him take it from his pocket. He pauses mid-dial, his eyes cast up toward his hairline, a little grin on his face. “You will forgive me if I outsource this question?”

“I’ll forgive you anything if you help me keep Corrie from shaving her own head.” Even if she’d look completely brilliant like that, like a little Natalie Portman, she needs enough hair so that when she’s fourteen, she has something outrageous to alter so she doesn’t get a tattoo on her face. He sees more of himself in her than is probably good for any of them.

Mycroft finishes dialing, and in two minutes and one return text, he has an appointment for a little more than an hour from now.

But if that’s this afternoon, it’s probably time to wake them up. He stands, and Mycroft’s chest rises and falls.

“It will be fine.” He kisses Mycroft’s forehead. “I’ll bring them out here. Betsy wants to ask you about the purple books anyway.”

Back in the den, they’re both still sacked out, but when he pokes their feet (Corrie kicks his hand), they open their eyes.

“What day is it?” Betsy sits up, finger-combs her hair.

“Same one it was.”

Corrie yawns and stretches like a cat before she rolls right off the sofa, on purpose. She catches herself, stands, scrubs a hand through her hair. She bares her teeth at it.

“Feral,” Betsy says, and Corrie grins back, snaps her teeth.

“Beast,” he says, “tame thyself. Mane alterations in an hour, and Mycroft’s home. Want to go say hello? And try not to frighten him too much?” On the other end of the couch, Betsy’s smoothing out the nap-induced wrinkles in her sweater.

Corrie inches toward the door to the den, peeks into the hallway. “Come _on_ ,” she says to Betsy. And all that’s left for him to do is trail after.

In the five minutes he’s been gone, Mycroft has set out a full tea service, complete with sugar cubes and milk, has packets of Gingernuts and HobNobs, and those were certainly not in the cupboards four hours ago. The cups and teapot are gently squared, a leafy green with wine-colored accents.

It all matches what Mycroft’s wearing.

Mycroft meets his eyes once before he turns his whole attention to the girls. Corrie is suddenly subdued, though she’s watching him. Betsy dips that curtsey again, and Mycroft smiles before making a neat half-bow. But neither of them says anything.

Lestrade can see Mycroft gather himself. He didn’t expect the girls to be so suddenly shy with him. They’re not shy with anyone else.

He smoothes his jacket and waistcoat. “I’m Mycroft. Welcome,” he says. “I hope you’ve found the flat comfortable.” He offers them chairs at the table, and the girls sit. “If there is anything you might need or want, you have only to ask.”

And the room is quiet again. He’s about to say something himself, just to break the tension, when Corrie says, “ _God_ , you’re fancy.”

Betsy drops her head, covers her face with her palm.

Lestrade can’t keep back the laughter, and Mycroft starts laughing with him.

“Yes,” he says. “I suppose I am.” He sits, proffers tea, and both of the girls nudge their cups closer. “I apologize. I am occasionally unduly formal.” He pours, clearly not-looking at Lestrade during the “occasionally.”

“No,” Betsy says. “This is lovely.” She looks utterly rapt, uses the tiny bamboo tongs to put one cube of sugar in her tea, tips milk from the little pitcher into her cup.

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with it. It’s just,” Corrie says, passing the Gingernuts and HobNobs around the table before she takes any for herself. For being herself, Corrie’s table manners are impeccable. “It’s just,” she says again, and she steals a glance at Lestrade before she finishes. “He’s really _not_ fancy.”

“Oi,” Lestrade says. It’s not like he can refute that, but still.

“I find I rather like that about him.” Mycroft’s foot nudges his under the table.

“He sings, too.” Betsy’s grin is wide.

Mycroft nods. “Wonderfully.”

“And he’s ace at football.” Corrie steals a sugar cube, crunches it by itself.

“Indeed.” Mycroft props his chin on his palm. “He’s very brave on the field. And off.” He reaches, squeezes Lestrade’s fingers once before he picks up his teacup again.

Lestrade feels his stomach clench, fluttery and tight.

Betsy and Corrie glance at each other, shrug, look pleasantly satisfied. “He’s a Gryffindor.” The tone: obviously.

Lestrade clears his throat, gets up. “Why don’t all of you work on sorting Mycroft and leave off the rest of it?” But he brushes the outside of Mycroft’s shoulder as he steps past.

Corrie protests that they’re not actually Sorting Hats; they can’t just read Mycroft’s mind and decide. It takes time. Betsy protests that he’s making coffee, that this is the best tea she’s ever had.

He measures grounds from the beans he’d blitzed earlier. “I’ll remember to tell your gran that.” His mum takes particular pride in her tea.

“If she had some of Mycroft’s tea, she’d agree with me.” Betsy is adamant. “Try it.”

Corrie picks up her cup, now that it’s awash with biscuit crumbs, and puts out her pinkie. “It’s a cure for hepatitis.”

He regrets putting The Kinks on their first mix CD.

Betsy says, “It’s a cure for chronic insomnia.”

Mycroft swivels to watch him put the cup beneath the machine’s spout. “It’s a cure for tonsillitis and for water on the knee.”

Lestrade just stares at him. That song isn’t on any of the CDs he’s made for Mycroft. “Lola” and “Sunny Afternoon” and “You Really Got Me” are scattered through, but not “Have a Cuppa Tea.” Mycroft turns back to look at his teacup and at the girls, who are looking all too pleased by the alliance. Lestrade cuts around the table, letting his espresso to fend for itself a moment as he opens the two cupboards beneath the stereo. Aside from a few more albums full of CDs of the sort he expects to find in Mycroft’s collection, there are stacks of jewel cases, some of them still in plastic. The entire body of work from The Clash, The Kinks, The Who, Bowie, Iggy Pop, even the Sex Pistols and The Slits—without checking to confirm, he’s pretty certain that every artist he’s ever mentioned is represented here. It would be stalker behavior if Mycroft were anyone but a Holmes, but this is showing restraint: he gave Mycroft his interest in music, offered that freely, and Mycroft’s just finding out as much as he can about it. No one has ever gone to so much trouble for him. He closes the cupboards.

When he returns to the table, Mycroft is concentrating very hard on refilling cups and refusing the biscuit that Corrie keeps nudging at him.

He steals the biscuit himself, gathers his coffee. “Troublemakers.” He bends down, kisses Mycroft’s cheek, though. When he glances at the girls, Corrie is paying them no particular mind in favor of stealing another sugar cube so he has to pull them away from her, and Betsy is grinning sort of goofily into her tea.

***

On the way home from the salon, they stop for sushi; Mycroft looks extraordinarily delighted when the girls name that their first choice. The girls preen when their server remarks on their hair: Corrie’s disaster has been turned into a spunky pixie cut, and Betsy decided not to cut hers but to have purple feathers woven in. Lestrade and Mycroft share a small bottle of sake and Lestrade is almost dreading leaving Mycroft’s flat for the house—the girls are almost as impressed with Mycroft as Lestrade is. Particularly the part when Mycroft ordered everything in Japanese and was teaching them useful phrases—“please,” “thank you,” “pardon me,” and something all three of them were giggling over when he came back from the toilet. None of them is forthcoming with the content of the phrase, either.

But it’s getting late, and the girls are yawning, and Mycroft will likely have an early morning. It seems like all of Mycroft’s mornings are early.

He’s double-checking the corners of rooms for forgotten sweaters or hair-ties and the girls are folding the blankets they’d used when he hears the door open, Anthea’s voice. The girls hear it, too. They both perk up, look at him. It might be about work, and he knows that’s not anything he should ever interrupt.

Then Mycroft calls for them, introduces Anthea, and though she gives him her usual cool look, she is pleasant and kind to the girls in a way that, if it’s faked, it’s done well enough that he can’t tell. And he’ll take that much.

The two of them carry down the bags—he thinks it looks like rather a lot of stuff for a week, but Anthea slots the suitcases together like a jigsaw puzzle, including a small leather satchel that must be Mycroft’s, one that he didn’t see in Mycroft’s flat. Anthea sees him see it, and she doesn’t comment, just closes the boot to the Aston Martin DB5. It’s a sixties model, but he’s not sure what year. Bob would know. He just knows it’s going to be the most exciting car he’s ever been in.

Lestrade is also certain that the black leather driving gloves Mycroft wears are even more exciting. The gloves and hat together are very nearly too much. He steals a kiss after the girls are settled in the back seat, and he’s glad to see that it’s been updated with proper seatbelts.

Mycroft provides a bit of commentary as they wind their way out of London, but that quiets as the responses from Betsy and Corrie fall off. When Lestrade glances back, they’re both curled up against their respective windows, eyes closed to the streetlights. He puts his hand on Mycroft’s thigh, and Mycroft covers his fingers with his own.

When they arrive, the gate is open, the lights are a gentle golden glow. Lestrade slips out of the car as carefully as he is able. He scoops up Corrie, who is limp, and Betsy blinks herself awake enough to shuffle after Mycroft, who leads them into the house, to two small bedrooms. In the first, he tucks Corrie into bed, just pauses to take off her shoes. She snugs into the blankets, pulls them over her head. Betsy flops into the other bed, and he tells her that he’ll be upstairs if they need anything. She mumbles assent, and he doubts he’ll hear anything from either of them for a good nine hours.

Mycroft returns with the small suitcases, puts the girls’ things in their rooms.

Then they’re alone again. Mycroft still has his coat on.

“I can show you where everything is.”

He’s certain he could figure it out, left to his own devices, but he doesn’t say that. He takes Mycroft’s left hand, slips the glove from it, knots their hands together. “You could show me in the morning. Anthea packed you an overnight bag. It’s under mine.”

Mycroft looks surprised again. “If you’re certain you wouldn’t mind.”

“Positive.”

And then it’s a matter of minutes until they’re standing in a room with a four-poster bed, a bed hung with heavy curtains that are gathered at each of the posts, canopied over the whole. And there’s a screen off to one side, this one wooden, painted with some appallingly floral motifs. Lestrade isn’t one for breaking things just to break them, but he’s considering it for that particular bit of furniture. He turns his attention to the bed instead.

“You aren’t serious.” The bed looks like some Victorian relic. The more he thinks about it, the more likely it is that it actually _is_ a period piece.

“I am occasionally unduly formal.” Mycroft shoots him a little grin, opens an armoire, tucks his bag into one of the recessed shelves. He opens it like it’s a package, seeing what’s there. He gathers up pyjamas. “And the mattress is quite updated.”

Lestrade just barely holds back the offer to help him break the mattress in properly, tries instead to pay attention to the room. The toilet is ensuite, though Mycroft says there’s another, downstairs, the door across from Corrie’s.

After brushing his teeth, marveling at the old claw-footed bath with its shower-curtain around it, he says, “Full tour tomorrow.” Now, he’s rather looking forward to getting the actual story of the place.

Mycroft nods, steps behind the screen. Lestrade makes it a point this time to be changed before Mycroft sees him undressed, and he’s gratified to see a flicker of disappointment cross Mycroft’s features.

Soon, they’re in bed again, and Mycroft tucks in close. Lestrade kisses him, rucks up his own t-shirt until Mycroft’s hand is on bare skin. His fingertips trace a few lazy patterns over Lestrade’s ribs before his palm rests warm and soft on his side. Mycroft’s cold feet tuck in under his calves. Lestrade forbears yelping—they’re not _that_ cold; someone’s clearly been here to turn on the heat because the floors aren’t freezing—and puts his arm around him.

There are a dozen things he might say right now, but he’s going to keep his mouth shut. At least in the proverbial sense—being in bed with Mycroft requires more kissing. It really requires _more_ than kissing, but he can’t shake the feeling that Corrie’s going to appear in the doorway any second. There is, too, that Mycroft’s been keeping even worse hours than he has, and even if Mycroft has that annoying Holmes trait of not actually needing the same amount of sleep as ordinary mortals, he does still need sleep. And Lestrade has come to understand that Mycroft really prefers to sleep on his right side, facing the door (and all of the rooms they’ve been in together have been arranged that way—he wonders if he’d sleep on his left side if the room were oriented differently), so when he rolls over, puts his back to Lestrade, he lets him go. He is tugged after, though, and this is the first time he’s been snugged up to Mycroft’s back like this. He’s been avoiding it, actually, because it’s the worst kind of tempting and he doesn’t want Mycroft to feel pressured. It’s even more tempting now, too, knowing how Mycroft likes attention on the back of his neck, and there it is, pale against the dark sheets. He nuzzles at the nape of his neck just once, and Mycroft pulls his left hand up from where it curls around his waist. He holds his hand, and Mycroft shifts, and then Lestrade’s hand is between the half-open fronts of Mycroft’s pyjama shirt, pressed to warm skin.

His hand is in the place he’d kissed the other morning, on the flat of his chest. He breathes, feels the answering rise of Mycroft’s lungs. For a moment, all he can think to do is try to _remember_ what he’s feeling: no hair on Mycroft’s chest, soft, thin-feeling skin over bone, the rapid beat of his heart. The next thing is automatic, a kind of rehearsed muscle-memory: he sweeps his hand down, the trajectory to cover his right pectoral, the firmed nipple beneath his palm, his ribs—but Mycroft’s fingers tighten on his wrist, stop him. And all of Mycroft is tense at once, even the heartbeat behind its cage.

“Sorry,” he says, “sorry.” He presses his forehead to Mycroft’s silk-covered shoulder, flattens his fingers where Mycroft had put them. “This is good,” he says. “Thank you.” His stomach hasn’t been so knotted—

Mycroft shifts his hand up, and Lestrade can’t quite process how disappointed, how pissed off he is with himself for getting greedy just now, for losing the chance—but Mycroft doesn’t push his hand away. He slides Lestrade’s fingers over his collarbone, out to one shoulder and back. “Here,” he says, his voice shaky, then firmer: “here.”

Lestrade kisses the back of his neck. “You don’t have to do this for me,” he says. No matter what he _wants_ , he’s been around the block enough to know that he doesn’t actually _need_ it. And even if he kind of hates having adult perspective sometimes, it’s important. He inches his hand away, but Mycroft doesn’t let go.

“I should very much like it,” he says, and his chest lifts, “if you would touch me.” His palm again on the upper half of Mycroft’s chest. “If you wouldn’t mind.” His voice is quieter now, all vibration.

The initial response he has is disbelief, and if there were enough light in the room, he’d pull Mycroft over so he could see the Holmsian expression of sheer what-brand-of-lunatic-are-you that’s on his face. What he says is, “I’d like nothing more.” And he maps the contours of Mycroft’s shoulders, the slope and curve of clavicle, the top of his pectorals. He’s careful there not to overstep his reach, though what he’s feeling makes it harder to keep from doing so because, while Mycroft’s skin is soft, cushioned, almost like a thin layer of velvet, Lestrade swears there’s also a very appealing firmness underneath. The textures together make him want to knead, to lick, to bite—he slides his hand up over Mycroft’s throat, strokes down from his jawline, before he gets himself in trouble again. No matter what, this is good because Mycroft tips his chin up, rolls his shoulders back, invites _this_.

Lestrade levers himself up on his right elbow so he can see at least the outline of this, the faint contrast of body and blanket, and Mycroft opens another button on his shirt, shrugs, bares his upper arms. Lestrade’s fingertips glide from bicep to bicep, over the crest of his shoulders until he’s petting nearly to his scapula and back. He turns his hand so the backs of his fingers skim the side of his neck, and Mycroft leans into it, half-rolls until Lestrade’s on his back, their bodies overlapped.

The angle is difficult, but Lestrade presses one kiss behind Mycroft’s ear. Once he does it, he wants to do more, but he told himself he wouldn’t and he won’t, and he has the distinct feeling that this is not about getting off. This is about two undone buttons, about a kind of nakedness that Lestrade knows he doesn’t understand, a kind of bare he’s never been. The feeling is heady, wild, all out of proportion. He thinks he’s holding his breath.

Maybe should say something, but the only things that come to mind are phrases Mycroft would dismiss as platitudes. So he only strokes skin over skin, his palm and fingertip by fingertip, trying to pay attention to the places that pull soft sounds from Mycroft, things that are not quite sighs: the line of his clavicle, the delicate hollow at the base of his throat.

Eventually, Mycroft catches his wrist again, presses lips to palm, and they resettle for sleep. The fabric of his pyjamas reshrouds him, but he keeps Lestrade close, keeps Lestrade’s arm as a bar across his chest. He squeezes once, carefully, his face tucked against the back of Mycroft’s shoulder. There’s no reason for his own heart to be hammering like this.

**Author's Note:**

> [Ana Tijoux—NPR Tiny Desk Concert](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsCO_M0Nnwk) This contains three of the four mentioned tracks. Check out Crisis de un MC for the last.
> 
> [The Kinks—Have a Cuppa Tea](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3rxNCzzJpY)


End file.
